


from dying embers

by LadyAllana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Before Battle, Blanket Fic, F/M, Married Couple, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 18:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18697186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAllana/pseuds/LadyAllana
Summary: Tyrion is the fool, but she is the one who comes to him.





	from dying embers

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my laptop for 2 years now....well.

This is absolutely the warmest place in the North at the moment, right on top of waters running under Winterfell, close to the hearth, where Stark’s have used as a nursery for their heirs for centuries before it was hastily transformed into the private quarters of the Hand of the Dragon Queen.

 

Tyrion hadn’t thought much on this, the Lady of the House was in the master bedroom with her sister and Lady Brienne with the shortage of rooms available, though he knows that neither Brienne nor Arya share those rooms frequently, rather choosing to stay at the barracks with the men. As does his own brother Jamie, who camps with whatever there is left to him of Lannister soldiers instead of with Tyrion as he had first suggested when he arrived here a fortnight ago.

 

With the war looming over the fate of the continent it seems that almost all propriety has been laid aside and neither the savage wildings of the north or the savages they have brought from the east with them seem to blink an eye to any transgression ladies may make.

 

Not that Tyrion has yet met a man brave enough to speak behind Arya Stark’s back. or try to stop her from doing anything. Both her brothers and her sister have seem to have given up on that account.

 

The room they have placed him in is small, something the lady of the house didn’t forget to apologize for when she guided him here his first day here. It was made to hold newborns and toddlers but none the matter, Tyrion isn’t much bigger, though he appreciates that the bedding was changed into a regular single one instead of a cot fit for a babe.

 

At night the winds howl through the walls, even though there is no window to let the cold inside. Here he is wrapped in the cold but firm embrace of this ancestral castle. Funny how he has spent the last couple of years living as an old fool but feels like a babe here.

 

Foolish, but at least now he can hear the blood flowing through his veins, a heart steadily thumping in his chest.

 

Alive, within ghost-ridden halls.

 

All the forgotten tomorrows flash here in the storm he has discovered: Rickon Stark who had been taken away from this room to never come back weeps for Lady Catelyn in the wind, the howls of his direwolf keep Tyrion awake. He is joined by the babe that was butchered in his mother’s belly in the Red Wedding multiplied to an eternity with heirs that could have been but never will be to the high seat of the north his former wife holds and Tyrion resolutely does not place any who surely would have been born from their marriage if his trial had never happened at the head of that imaginary table.

 

What are the cries of babes he tries to console himself, urge himself to close his eyes now so that he can be strong enough to face another day, compared to the cries of the dragons who have lost a brother to the night king?

 

His teeth clatter, fingers and toes ice cold under the furs even with the fire running because no matter how warm this room once was, now the waters running under the castle are as frozen as the wall and he is from the Westernlands, not even remotely made to suffer through such bone-deep cold like the wolves of the North or Daenerys whose fire burns so dangerously bright inside or Dothraki who have been cut from a very different mold. What can but a weary drunk dwarf can do to stop the blood freezing in his veins, when even his wine is frozen.

 

His door opens without a knock, or perhaps he has neglected to hear it from the clatter of teeth. It’s highly unlikely that it’s an assassin that has managed to get past the unsullied guarding his door. The queen wouldn’t come to his room this late at night so he doesn’t bother to get up. If the little Stark wolf has decided to end him at last, there is nothing he can really do anyways and perhaps finally the cold will cease to torment him so. If it’s Pod, Bronn or Jamie they can just fuck off or sleep on the floor.

 

“Do piss off or be done with it.” He mutters shaking, burrowing closer to the furs trying to get a desperate bit of warmth from a source which can offer none.

 

“I didn’t think you would be awake my lord.”

 

He springs up as fast as he can, a trembling mess of a dwarf under furs heavy enough to strangle the likes of Clegane.

 

“My lady forgive me-“

 

The Lady of Winterfell, his former wife stands there at the door, with a candle in her hand and just clad in a shift. Her blood red Tully hair cascades down her shoulders and down to her hips. As white as a bride on her wedding night, she reminds him of the Sansa that was given to her by force in the capital so long ago, and it’s a surprise to him as much as it would be to anyone to see her again after so long, gone the heavy black dresses and the regal look that reminds him so much of Lady Catelyn who fiercely apprehended him and locked him away in the Eeyrie to get her family back, and instead stands there a young girl of sixteen.

 

He can’t help but notice that she isn’t trembling.

 

None of them do, he thinks. Not Jon Snow who is accustomed to hide under his heavy black cloak, nor Lady Arya, so accurate a copy of her father and so motionless sometimes in her silent watch that she reminds him of the statue of Baelor. Sansa, whiter than the snow all around them stands tall, even like this, no especially like this, covered in white as an Ice Queen.

 

Is it treason to think of her so?

 

She comes in and drags him back to the mattress, making sure he is well covered under the furs.

 

Her hand brushes against his cheek in her worry, a touch of feathers barely felt under his coarse beard, a feeble attempt to defend himself against the biting cold.

 

She is warm, so very warm, warmer than she has ever been in King’s Landing he thinks. Everyone looks at her and sees a trout but she is just as a direwolf as her siblings, unaffected.

 

“I thought you’d be cold, I’m sorry we weren’t able to accommodate you better.”

 

Under the yellow tint of the candlelight, her skin is smoother than the old cotton of her shift. The material nowhere as sophisticated as the dresses she prefers to wear now, though he knows that the stitching of it is from her immaculate hand. On her arms and from what he dares to gaze at her breast, dance the shadows of a monster long gone.

 

They each fought their own battles, his little wife and him.

 

What a horrible thought it is to think his journey has been the easier one.

 

If she notices his gaze, Sansa doesn’t comment. Her eyes watch his with a sense of calmness Tyrion most assuredly does not feel at the moment. Any other woman, it would be unnerving but she has always had some of Mother in her, something unworldly.

 

Something too good for the gone to shit world they lived in, something he thought would have been beaten out of her long ago by the likes of Joffrey, Cersei and him.

 

“People are doubling up… I’m afraid your Brother is with Lady Brienne and your companions have chosen to seek whores’ company.” The Sansa he knew wouldn’t be so direct with her words, but they have all changed. “I thought since you need to stay here at all times and me as well, I’d offer myself.”

 

She moves closer to him but he springs up, his frozen limbs burn in protest, his throat hurts, he is alive.

 

The furs around him fall to the floor, leaving him almost as naked as her, or perhaps even more so. She looks more unreachable than ever.

 

“As a bed warmer?!”

 

Is it the notion or the sound that hurts him so?

 

Sansa doesn’t blink, but her long nimble fingers reach down to collect the furs back to the bed, there are jagged lines on the soft skin of her inner arms, shapes of which form a grotesque embroidery.

 

“I know that I’ve been spoiled …raped and broken.”

 

Her words are timid, but also as heavy, cold and sure as ice. He expects to see tears in her eyes when he manages to find the courage to meet them, instead, he is faced with the defiant fire of a thousand suns.

 

In this scenario at least, he was to be the one to comfort her.

 

“Sansa-“, the silence lingers in the air between them, probably as frozen as his toes.

 

She is no longer one to be comforted if she ever was at one point.

 

How has she held on, when Tyrion has broken again and again until he became a cracked shell barely able to hold the shitty excuse for the wine they have here?

 

Take a deep breath.

 

His teeth throb with the cold of it, his head feels like bursting.

 

His hand joins her on the fur, pulling it up fully.

 

She is completely still, still as stone and ice.

 

Then her hand turns and catches his, fingers twining slowly. Her skin is the warmest thing he has felt in months.

 

There are a million ghosts within these walls, Tyrion is sure, but in this moment they are all silent. The wind has stopped, his fingers tingle at the feel of her, his chest feels like being tickled under his ribcage. He can feel his blood running through his veins, he can feel her heartbeat on a delicate blue vein on her wrist.

 

He lets Sansa arrange the furs on the bed, lets her lead him inside and inside the warmth of her, warmer than dragon fire, and if he closes his eyes really tight and burrows deep into her bosom at the waking hours of dawn, breathing the scent of her red hair, if he wishes and dreams and prays and bets to the heavens, for a single second at least, behind the dead weight of his eyelids, he hears the songs of children.


End file.
